Informed Layman

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Storage Rising
2007-09-01 15:37:00
The need for storage is an ever-increasing one. As soon as we move from 100GB hard drives to 500GB drives there arises new or improve applications and media formats to fill them up. Think of the move from people hearing MP3 on their PCs to them watching DVD ripped movies. And now the move to High Definition movies will keep the need for storage going for some time, not counting the possible
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Google purchases Peakstream (Multiprocessor software company)
2007-06-06 01:47:00
Google has bought Peak stream as reported by the register. Peakstream is a company that focuses on making software to exploit to the maximum capability the resources provided by multicore CPUs and principally GPUs. I talked about stream processing before in this article. Peakstream solutions where aimed toward the HPC (High Performance Computing) market, like the pharmaceutical, financial and oil
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Foundries, (When you can't do it yourself, delegate)
2007-06-02 18:39:00
First of all, I'm sorry for the lack of updates i will try to keep up better in the future. I want to talk a little about one of the major moves in the semiconductor industry. Mainly the move from the in-house production of chips to a 3rd party manufacturer, called foundries. Foundries are basically fabrication facilities for hire. Say a company designs a chip but it doesn't have sufficient

AMD will announce new notebook Chipset and CPU, Puma and Griffin on 05/18/0
2007-05-17 02:03:00
I`ve come across some interesting information. On may 18 of this year (this friday) AMD will announce a new Chip s et know as Puma and a new CPU know as Griffin aimed at the notebook market. The new products are aimed toward the higher-end notebook market. The new CPU have improved power management which includes split power plane for the CPU's cores (each core can adjust its own voltage
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News development
2007-03-01 23:30:00
Every once in a while I will post some links about news developments, like company announcements or articles from different websites, that I use as sources to base my analysis upon. These news in part substantiate my theories (or at least I hope they do) but the consequences are open to interpretation so if anyone differs from my take on them I welcome criticism. Microsoft Releases free
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Another Digital Convergence Post
2007-02-19 22:34:00
The fact that digital devices such as cellphones, TVs, and such have steadily grown in features and in interoperability is nothing new, but the fact that this devices have found their way into the mainstream market is a lot more recent. The multimedia capability of the PC has been touted for many years now, but cellphones and digital cameras along with Ipods are the true culprits of bringing the
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Of streaming and GPGPUs
2007-02-11 17:28:00
Just as in the last post I wrote about virtualization the concept of streaming (or stream processing) isn't new. On the other hand its approach to maturity and mainstream adoption is a lot more recent. When I say "streaming" I talk about a specific area of computer science, one that is mainly based on applying a same set of functions and apply the same work to a large array of data. It is a type
More About: Stream , Streaming , Ming

Virtualization is all too real
2007-02-10 03:10:00
Virtualization in a nutshell is a technique which allows to run many operating systems or applications simultaneously in a way that fools them into thinking that they got all the hardware of the host machine to themselves. Why is this important? Because many computers, mainly servers, aren't run at full capacity all of the time. This means if you have a lot of servers running at half capacity
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"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest" - Albert Ein
2007-02-08 16:09:00
The power of compound interest is not to be underestimated as expressed in the famous quote by Albert Einstein. One place in which this force clearly operates is in dividend paying stocks. Comp anies whose stock pay a periodic, often on a quarterly basis, amount of cash to its stock holders. The beauty of this payments is that many companies increase the payment each year (though there are
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Capacity and Manufacturing, it's not over.
2007-02-06 15:46:00
On the last few earnings calls Q&As AMD has been questioned, and fairly so, about building overcapacity, this means if AMD is growing the capacity to manufacture chips at over 30% a year and Intel is also building more capacity, what stops this from creating an oversupply problem in which supply outgrows demand? I see two solutions to this: 1. the x86 architecture is taking over more and more
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3M the great diversificator
2007-02-05 22:36:00
I was going to write a post regarding 3M and its prospects but I just recently read one by another blogger that more or less summarizes what I meant to say. The only thing I would add is that I think 3M its a great way to diversify a portfolio as it is a company that participates in many fields. Also as much as 60% of 3M´s revenue comes from outside the US. this helps in a market with a weak
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The Consumer Segment
2007-02-04 16:08:00
The consumer Segment which includes electronic devices for entertainment such as consoles, digital TVs, cellphones, is growing at a very fast pace, much more so than the PC industry. When AMD acquired ATI, they also acquired a foot in this market, and a very strong position in the products I mentioned above. ATI had, and now AMD has the Imageon line of chips for handheld devices along with the
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My take on AMD
2007-02-01 23:13:00
One of the main reasons i started investing on technology was because i saw great entry points to the stocks of the companies that i followed. This happens not as infrequently as you may think considering the volatility of the sector. Two years ago i bought AMD stock, it went to great heights soon after, though i sold them on the way up (rookie mistake). Then they came down to the same level
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Introduction
2007-01-26 23:59:00
Welcome to my blog. This is my first entry to the world of blogs. The reason i started this blog is to provide my personal view, to the people who may bother to read it, on a few topics that interest me, mainly investing, the technology scene (computers and else) and the space in which they live together, ie. tech companies. I am in no way a professional in either of this fields, but i follow
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